(Originally posted Monday, June 23, 2008 )
TERRE HAUTE, IND (AP)–April Wilkerson was visiting her grandmother one night last May when she heard disconcerting sounds coming from Grandma Trudy’s bedroom. At first, she was worried that it might be an intruder or some kind of wild animal. To her utter horror, she discovered that her beloved grandmother was performing the act of sexual intercourse with a man she knew from the soda counter at the five and dime.
“I couldn’t believe it,” says April, who is 18 years old. “I have been in therapy ever since. How could this be happening in America?”
Across the nation, American teens like April are becoming increasingly distressed to find that their grandparents are engaging in sexual intercourse, sometimes more than once a month.
“It’s disgusting and immoral,” says Randall David, 17, of Pacific Palisades, Calif. “These are our grandparents we’re talking about. They’re the ones who remember our birthday and give us cookies. To think of them engaging in sex when they can’t possibly reproduce anymore just sickens and depresses me.”
David and Wilkerson recently corresponded by MySpace and have formed an outreach group called “Let’s Stop Old People From Having Sex.” Here they have met many others like them who say that the spread of “geriatric canoodling” is on the rise and is a cause of growing concern.
“What if they, like, die while they’re doing it?” asks Wilkerson. “I mean, they’re old. Anything could happen. I just don’t understand why they would want to even do something like that. You’re supposed to grow out of sex and start knitting or something.”
Marva Wainwright, a sex therapist in Austin, Texas, says that it is often the case that older people continue to have intercourse if they value it, and a recent New England Journal of Medicine study reports that a quarter of those between 75 and 85 were having regular sex. About one third of those said they had given or received oral sex in the last year.
“Uggghhhh!” screamed Wilkerson. “I’m gonna vomit! I can’t believe my freakin’ ears. I mean, it’s OK for teens to have sex, because we’re good looking and all, and our bodies are like, wanting it all the time. But for Grandma Trudy to do something like that … ugh, I can’t even think about that.”
Maribeth Lundegaard, a 17-year-old from Belleville, Kansas, who was recently named student council president at her high school, agreed with her peers.
“Sex is a serious topic,” says Lundegaard. “It is not only a matter of personal freedom, but a matter of social responsibility and personal morality that every person must give serious thought to before engaging in. That is why, as a teen, I have taken serious precautions and talked about my choices responsibly with a doctor. However, old people having sex is just disgusting.”
Asked about her sexual behavior, Wilkerson’s grandmother Gertrude Stuyvesant said, “MYOB. Mind your own beeswax. … April’s birthday is September 27.”
“Listen,” said David, “I love my Grandpa Dwayne. And he used to tell me lots of stories of being serviced in Mexico in the 1940s. But those were different times. He’s got to stop having sex right now. He doesn’t know what it could do. It’s like they told us in school … it could mess up your future.”
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Beauty is Imperfection 